


Some Legends Are Told

by LadySmutterella



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Abduction, Found Family, Gladiators, M/M, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 14:36:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13789788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySmutterella/pseuds/LadySmutterella
Summary: The first time Pete sees Patrick, Pete has only just arrived in Rome.





	Some Legends Are Told

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scarredsodeep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/gifts).



> I've been writing this roughly forever, which is why I should never be an item in an auction. This is for my beautiful friend, scarredsodeep, who thought I was worth paying for in the fic against fascism auction.
> 
> My thanks to her for her support, love, daily messages, and selfies. Also thank you to Jiksa for the beta - your merciless and loving feedback makes me a better writer than I could ever be on my own. 
> 
> As always, the flaws in this story are wholly mine - time, energy, and various real life factors are conspiring against me right now, but I hope that you enjoy this story.

_I'll tell my love to take it easy on you but I can't make any promises_

 

The first time Pete sees Patrick, Pete has only just arrived in Rome. 

His legs are still made of rubber, unable to cope with land after weeks at sea, and they let him down – like everything else has – leaving him sprawling in the dirt of his new owner’s home. The tears and dust smear to paste on his face as the blood trickles from the wounds on his back. He doesn’t have the energy to care. 

Nothing feels right. Nothing will ever feel right again.

He misses his family, his _home_ with a deep, visceral pain that almost eclipses the forced march from the boat, the auction, the whipping to show him his place in the new order of things. 

All he wants is to be alone, to hide from reality in the temporary refuge that sleep offers, but even through his tears he can hear others moving around the space; knows that his weakness is being catalogued and judged. 

He should get up; he should move. He does neither, and might have remained on the floor forever except a hand falls on his arm. 

“Water,” the-boy-who-Pete-will-later-learn-is-Patrick says haltingly. His accent is strange; he sounds like he is talking around a mouthful of stones. But his eyes are kind and he is smiling, and even though Pete knows he should be on his guard, should be wary of trusting anyone at all, he cannot help himself. 

He manages to sit up and grasps the beaker the boy is offering him.

“Thank you,” he says, and coughs when his dry throat strangles the word. He sips some water and tries again. “Thank you.”

The boy nods and starts to retreat, but he must see something in Pete’s eyes because he fetches the bowl of beans he is shelling and sits beside Pete, close enough that their ankles brush as he works. 

It’s the smallest touch, but it grounds Pete a little, makes it more difficult to lose himself in his pain. 

Eventually he reaches out and starts shelling beans alongside the boy. 

He’s still alone, lost in this strange land with strange people, but somehow when the boy smiles shyly at him, his fate seems less bleak. 

—

_Patrick_ , he learns in the end. _Patrick_.

The word is heady and sweet on his tongue, lingering like the taste of stolen honey he remembers from when he was a small child. 

He delights in saying it – as they work, as they train for whatever it is their owner wants for them. 

Every time he does Patrick shakes his head, as if he’s angry at Pete’s incessant words. But his lips twist into a small, secret smile that is as sweet as the taste of his name, and Pete knows that this smile is just for him. 

—

Training is brutal.

They are not fighters – not even close to it. There doesn’t even seem to be a point to it. Maybe fighting’s an obsession of their owner’s; maybe it’s just for his amusement. 

The point of being a slave is that it doesn’t matter. Your life is a comedy or a tragedy or a drama. You do your best to live on through it in the hope that you will keep living. You try to hope that you will manage to keep some part of the things you love or that matter to you. You know that the odds are against you. 

Pete struggles, but he is small and scrappy and he can still remember fighting the other boys in his village for the sheer joy of it. It’s harder on Patrick, though. The soft lines of his thighs are built for loving rather than fighting and it’s no surprise he attracts the sharpest words and harshest blows from the slave who’s training them. 

Pete helps when he can, takes the beatings that would fall to Patrick if it wasn’t for his intervention. He urges him on as they train, playing the fool as if that will distract Patrick from his aching muscles and bleeding hands. Spins stories about their life after this, about the happiness that is bound to be theirs, about the cottage they will have when they retire. 

He tells these stories even though they both know retirement is a dream they’ll never live to see. 

—

Memories are easy to escape in the daylight. There is work and training and Patrick everywhere he looks.

But when the light gets low, and the shadows spread their fingers across the room, it is harder to escape. 

There are nights when Pete struggles to sleep despite his exhaustion; nights when he wakes from dreams of his mother with his cheeks wet with tears and Patrick wide-eyed and wakeful next to him. 

“My guard dog,” Pete whispers, trying to force himself to believe that Patrick is enough to keep the horrors at bay, that Patrick won’t just end up being one more casualty, one more of the things that Pete will have to lose. 

Patrick understands, though. Sometimes it seems like Patrick understands Pete better than he understands himself.

In the sweat-damp dark of the night, Patrick links his fingers with Pete’s and holds on, as if together they can will the world to be different. 

—

The one bright spot in Pete’s new life is when Patrick talks to him. Not about training or the work they do for their master in his house, but when Patrick talks about his homeland, his life from before… the sort of things a free person might talk about, Pete imagines. 

“I miss the colours,” he tells Pete once when they’ve been fetching fish from the market and they’re sloping their way home along the dusty, dry paths. “It used to be green and oh…” He shakes his head, frustrated. “There was heather and ferns. They smelled like home.”

“Not like here?” Pete asks when it seems Patrick has lapsed into silence, and he shakes his head again. 

“There was more rain, more space.” He glares at the sky above him like it’s offending him with its presence. “You could sit on the moor and watch the clouds roll in over the headland, across the bay. See them coming up towards you.”

He falls silent again. Pete reaches out and rests his hand on his arm. 

Patrick’s mouth twists. 

“It’s too warm here,” he says, wiping irritably at the sweat on his brow. “Too bright.” He looks away from Pete. “Back home we had sunlight that didn’t try to kill you.”

Pete can still remember the white sand of his home, the endless blue skies.

“I wish I could have seen it,” he says, the dust and grit crunching under their sandals, relentless. 

—

Their first fight, when it comes, is a travesty. 

They’re too small, and even if they are scrappy – even if they’ve trained with everything in them – they don’t really stand a chance. 

Patrick goes down first, tangled in the fisherman’s net. 

“No.” Pete’s rushing towards him before he can think, before he can even remember that this is a small fight in a small town, not a fight to the death. 

He wouldn’t care even if he did remember. His entire world has narrowed down to Patrick’s frightened face in the net, the unlikely pale skin of his legs, the way his fingers claw at the dirt. 

He runs towards Patrick, forgetting everything else, and doesn’t even see the other gladiator coming. 

He’s caught across the forehead by a wooden shield, and doesn’t have time to work out what’s happened before he hits the floor. 

When he comes around, he’s been dragged off the field and his head is aching like it’s an overripe melon that’s about to split. 

He doesn’t care; Patrick’s there and his fingers are gently carding through Pete’s hair. 

“Sorry,” Pete mumbles and Patrick’s hand pauses for a second. 

“We’ll do better next time,” he says, but he doesn’t meet Pete’s eyes. 

—

When Pete wakes up, it’s dark and the slave quarters are is quiet. There’s still time to sleep; he’s not sure what even woke him. 

And then he hears it, a small sniff from the pallet bed next to him. Patrick. 

Pete aches like… well. Like he’s been soundly beaten by a much bigger man. And he’s tired in the way you can only be when you’re a slave and your days are taken up by cleaning your master’s home and being trained to be his own personal fighting doll. 

He should stay in bed, should get more sleep; he can’t. It’s _Patrick_. 

He pulls himself off his mattress, gritting his teeth against the noises that want to escape and crawls across to where Patrick’s sleeping.

“Hey,” he mutters, quiet enough that he won’t wake the other slaves. “Patrick.” He doesn’t ask if Patrick’s okay – they both already know the answer to that. He can only offer Patrick whatever poor comfort he can with his presence, his body, his touch. 

He’s almost expecting Patrick to push him away, but he doesn’t. He reaches out and grabs Pete, manhandling him until they’re hidden under the covers together. It’s very warm, and when Pete reaches up Patrick’s face is wet. 

“Hey,” Pete tries again, but Patrick stops his words with a desperate, salt-flavoured kiss. 

As first kisses go, it could be better. Patrick uses too much force, and they’re both clumsy. The cut on Pete’s lip that had only just stopped weeping bursts open again until the shared space of their mouths becomes copper-slick. Pete doesn’t care. 

“Patrick,” he whispers, his tongue stumbling over the syllables, his lips shaping the word against the damp skin of Patrick’s cheek. Patrick’s breath catches on a small, broken noise and he turns his face to kiss Pete again, gentler this time, more like how Pete imagined it would be. 

And maybe it’s fumbling and clumsy – maybe they are clinging to each other – but in the end they manage to press together until one sort of desperation is replaced by another.

They rub together – too caught up in the moment to do anything more refined – and it’s Patrick, spilling warm and wet against Pete’s thigh that sets _him_ off. 

He guesses there is a cue to take here, and even though he doesn’t want to he starts to pull away. Patrick’s having none of it, though. 

“C’mere,” he mutters, pulling Pete back against him with warm, damp hands and wrapping himself around Pete like he’s terrified that Pete will be just one more thing he loses if he lets go. 

Pete doesn’t normally sleep well like this, but he’s… relaxed now. Eventually he manages to drift off with Patrick’s arms around him. 

Sated like this, falling asleep, Pete can almost pretend that the salt of Patrick’s tears are from the kiss of waves on the beach of their future home. 

—

Things change from here. Maybe Pete realises the stakes they’re playing for; maybe he finally has something he isn’t willing to lose. 

Whatever the reason, they begin training with a ferocity they never suspected they had, desperate to defend this new thing they have created between them against the rest of the world. 

It’s not much – in the greater scheme of things it feels like nothing – but Pete knows from experience that sometimes it is the smallest wound that hurts the most, the faintest glimmer of hope that gives you the courage to live through the day.

He’d thought he would never get used to this world, to the smell and noise and feel of it. But with Patrick at his side, with Patrick to fight for it becomes… mundane. Normal. Until the tiny things that used to stop him in his tracks become just another part of the fabric of his life, unimportant when compared to his desire to find a way to preserve this tiny shred of life he and Patrick are building for themselves. 

\--

And then they get paired with two other slaves, as if they’re not ridiculous enough on their own. 

It’s not as if the others are even any good. Joe is bigger than the rest of them, but there’s something up with his back and the weirdest movements mean he has to sleep flat on the floor for three days. Andy’s more promising – he’s wiry, strong, fit… but he doesn’t actually like fighting, and he scowls when he’s put in a position where he can’t avoid it. 

In the end Patrick and Pete end up fighting _for_ them rather than with them, which really defeats the fucking point. 

Still, they make it through their fights, and even if it isn’t pretty they manage to survive, the four of them.

Pete’s not even sure when the shift comes, when they go from being just another set of liabilities that he’ll have to take care of to being something like… well. Something he can’t seem to see himself living without. 

He can’t help it. It must be some sort of flaw in his character but Andy is kind of helplessly wide eyed and earnest in his beliefs about slavery (as if that can help any of them escape the cage they’re trapped in), and he fights so fucking fiercely. It leaves Pete helpless. He can see the time when he has to pull Andy’s lifeless and bloody body out of the amphitheatre almost as clearly as he can see the copper belt of his master that he has to polish before he visits temple, and still he doesn’t push Andy away. 

Joe is sweeter, and Pete wishes he was immune to that, but how can he be when Joe is so young and stupid and is making the poor life choice to hero-worship Pete? It doesn’t matter that Pete can’t save them – doesn’t even know how to being planning to save them – Joe looks at him like he’s hung the moon. So, Pete does the best he can, watching and covering so Joe has half a chance to fulfil his religious obligations. They’re all far from home – in more ways than one. Rituals become important. Pete can understand that. He wishes he had rituals of his own. 

He doesn’t have rituals, but he does have Patrick. It’s nearly as good. 

And even if the others take Patrick away from him – just a little, but even a little counts when you have nothing in the first place – Pete finds he can’t mind. Not when he sees how Patrick smiles as Joe talks to him about the music of his homeland, not when he sees how fiercely Andy fights to protect Patrick’s back. 

Maybe, he thinks, just maybe there could be space for Joe and Andy in their future home. 

—

It’s going to come crashing down, Pete knows that. Life is like that, after all. 

They’re a joke, after all, and the only point of a joke is always going to be the punchline. 

Maybe they all see this coming. 

Their training takes on the same edge Pete felt when he found Patrick. They do everything the trainers ask of them, everything they’re expected to do… But now they do more. They talk in low voices, late into the night. They come up with combinations, moves, routines… A ragtag of things that no one could expect of them. 

They start collecting _things_. Scraps of knowledge, ways to fight, bits and pieces that they pick up in the street, in the holding areas, in all the places they go. 

It’s nothing that could be called a weapon, not as such. It’s just a magpie’s treasure trove of stones and leather, punches that their trainers might not be expecting, an understanding of where the road out of town is and the parts of the countryside around their master’s summer villa that might afford cover. Where there are freemen’s clothes drying in the sun, where horses can be hired for a few coins and fewer questions. You know. Just in case they ever need it. 

“Are you sure this will work?” Pete asks Joe one night when they’ve trained together until the sky is nearly light. 

“No,” Joe says, his voice flat, his eyes fixed on a horizon neither of them can see. “But what other option do we have?”

—

The end, when it comes, is a shock and utterly predictable all at once.

They leave for the arena, like any other day. They tolerate the mockery of the other gladiators – the real gladiators – and they take their place on the bloodstained sand of the arena floor.

Except this time it isn’t a supercilious swordsman, being taken down a peg by an impatient owner. It isn’t a fisherman at the end of his career, willing to play for the crowd and his next meal without putting his life on the line. 

This time it’s a giant of a man, and they look at each other and realise that this is it. One way or another, they will not be going home. 

Still, they try their best to pretend it’s just like any other fight. Their owner is in the crowd; they can’t afford to take their shot too early – not when they only have the one. 

They try to bring him down fairly; they can’t. They try with every skill they have, every trick their trainers have taught them, every ounce of strength in their bodies. It slides off him, like drops of water off an otter’s fur, making no impact, no mark. 

They have no choice. _Pete_ has no choice. He knew it would come to this. 

The guy hurls them to the sand, one after the other. He’s toying with them – Pete can see it in his eyes. He’s going to hurt them, and he’s going to enjoy doing it. Pete hasn’t lived so sheltered a life – not even before the slavers took him – that he doesn’t recognise that look. 

Pete thought he knew himself, knew what he was capable of. He didn’t. He had no idea until Patrick is lying in the dust and the guy lifts his sword and smiles. 

All he can focus on is Patrick, the sweat on his face, the dust sticking to it. How wide Patrick’s eyes are, how full of fear. 

It’s down to Pete now, and if he doesn’t do something, they’re going to die. They are going to die, and more importantly, Patrick is going to die. He’s going to die on the sand while people laugh at them, like his life means nothing. He will be just another casualty of the culture that views lives as disposable; humans as belongings. 

He can’t allow it; he won’t. 

“What…” Pete starts to say in a low voice, but Joe and Andy are at his shoulders before he can get the words out. 

“We can’t beat him,” Joe says, his voice almost lost under the unbearable jeering of the crowd and his own desperate, panting breaths. “Not in a fair fight.”

“Not without help,” Andy says, pressing something into Pete’s hand. 

In his heart, Pete always knew it would come to this. It was the weapon he used as a child; he’s been the best at using it since they scraped together the parts they needed to build it. Still, there is a tiny traitorous part of himself that wishes that there was someone else to bear this burden now, someone else who could face this pressure. 

But there isn’t. There’s just him. So he nods and takes the slingshot that Andy pushes into one hand and the stone that Joe presses into the other. 

The fact that his brothers are there – even for this – helps. It steadies him. If he can survive this, if _they_ can survive this, there will be a home for all of them. A home under slate covered skies, by green seas and heather-purple moors. 

Maybe. 

Pete put that from his mind, breathes in. His focus narrows until the crowd vanishes from his sight, until the loss and pain and strain are gone, until even Andy and Joe vanish from his awareness. Patrick is the last thing he loses. 

He raises his arm, swings the slingshot, lets it circle and build speed.

Nothing exists now apart from him and his opponent and the stone circling his head. Another breath and even he is gone. 

There is the motion, so well rehearsed and practiced that it feels like intuition rather than choice, and the spin ends, the stone releases. 

There is nothing but silence as it flies through the air – not breath, nor hope, nor future. There is nothing but the now until the stone hits and the fighter crumples to the ground, blood blossoming from his forehead as his skull shatters.

He takes forever to fall. It happens in a timeless vacuum – silent and inevitable – and it’s only when he hits the sand that time resumes, that the screams of the crowd rush back into Pete’s ears, that Patrick scrambles to his feet and, face white, joins Pete and Joe and Andy, as if their solidarity will count for anything. 

Maybe it will. Through the mingled boos and cheers and clamour Pete looks up until he sees the face of the local magistrate, his lips tight with disapproval, but more interested in the political fall out of this than in his own feelings.

For a second their lives hang in the balance. There are men behind them who would kill them without a thought, and if that doesn’t happen here and now it will happen in the next fight… or the one after that. 

They are marked men now. They’re an embarrassment to their owner, and he wants them dead as surely as the magistrate does. Their only hope is the crowd, and Pete knows in his blood and bones that the crowd is a fickle beast. If it spares their lives today it is only so it can take them later when it tires of them. 

And yet… tomorrow is another day, and if Pete has learnt anything it is where there is life there is hope. 

He waits, breathless, feeling the friends he never expected to find and their skin, alive and warm, against his, and even though he wants to cry or beg like a child bargaining with the monsters in the dark, he doesn’t. Instead he juts his chin up and does his best to look fearless, invulnerable. 

It’s a fantasy, he knows, but he’s almost sure the magistrate is meeting his eyes, and Pete has no idea if that is a bad thing or a good thing until the magistrate extends his arm and turns his thumb up. 

Windows of opportunity are small and hard to find, but in the chaos that follows Pete finds his. 

They own the narrative now. No one will question the victors leaving the arena, and – if they’re lucky – they might get out of the building and the street before anyone questions what’s happening. 

Their dream is not far away; Pete is _almost_ sure he can find their way to it.

“Let’s go,” he says, and, silently, the others follow. 

__

Maybe they escape the city. Maybe the sleezy guy who smiles at Joe like he’s for sale will let them hire horses without a question. Maybe they find a farmhouse in the countryside where they trade labour for safety until they can move on. 

Maybe one day they will reach a land where the sea is green and the earth under their feet smells rich and damp, even as the drizzle settles on their clothes and Patrick shivers. 

Pete’s skin will become pale this far from the sun, Andy’s skin will be lost under a history of tattoos. 

They will run a farm together – independent, relying on no one except for when they wish to. 

At night Patrick will trail his fingers over the stories Pete’s scars tell and will smile in the low light of the peat fire when his touch wakes Pete from his well-earned sleep. 

Maybe they all find happiness – maybe they all survive. Maybe they didn’t have to pay a price for this ending, or maybe the price they paid was worth it. 

Maybe.


End file.
